The Post-Socialist Ideology and The Fantastic in Neo Rauch’s Pictorial Fiction

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Ricardo González-García

Dealing with the border separating fiction from reality, Neo Rauch's painting represents unusual elements that burst into viewer's stability in order to question her/him through the fantastic genre. Thus, starting from a post-socialist ideology that arose out of the socialist realism studied by the young artist, his work assimilates different iconographic sources. Accordingly, it conforms a space of unifying convergence that leads to reflect on the persistence of the ideological background, which is still present today. This establishes an imaginary that, while creating new modern myths, sets aside the accomplishment of the «new man» – which was an aim of socialist realism’s propaganda – in exchange for access to the «transcendental fantastic», this «dream» of an art inviting much serious thought. This gives rise to a truly renewed human being who finds his identity by facing his post-historical and anachronistic moment, without the burden of traumas caused by past events.

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How to Cite
González-García, Ricardo. “The Post-Socialist Ideology and The Fantastic in Neo Rauch’s Pictorial Fiction”. Brumal. Revista de investigación sobre lo Fantástico, 2019, vol.VOL 7, no. 2, pp. 67-89, doi:10.5565/rev/brumal.612.
Author Biography

Ricardo González-García, Universidad de Cantabria

Doctor en Bellas Artes por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, en 2016, con la tesis: Interferencias: influencia de otros medios icónicos en la estética de la pintura, y Licenciado en Bellas Artes por la Universidad de Salamanca, en 1999. Compagina la docencia como Profesor de Expresión Plástica y su Didáctica, en la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad de Cantabria, con su actividad como Artista Plástico y la Investigación teórico-práctica, en la que, como principales campos de estudio, destacan: la Historia del Arte, los Estudios de Cultura Visual, las nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, y la Didáctica de la Expresión Plástica.